Why I Identify With TV's New Not-Quite-Bad Girls

I invited the whole class to my birthday party. I probably talked at length to your parents at yours. When I was an assistant, my boss's sandwich was on his desk before he knew he was hungry. I am undefeated at thank you notes.

For most of my life, I thought this was simply the right way to act. But now I have two kids, a career, and an old house that needs constant repairs. In other words, I'm firmly into grownup territory, and I am learning that being your best good self isn't always the way to go. Yes, I'm sure that my manners and work ethic have helped me get jobs and maintain relationships. But they don't always get results.

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Some things I've learned: Offering the electrician freshly brewed iced tea is not going to get you the bottom-line estimate. Those aggressive younger millennials who refuse to take sandwich-getting jobs seem to constantly be posting promotions on LinkedIn. And when I have to have a difficult conversation with a babysitter, my nice stationery can't save me.

I'm sure that my manners and work ethic have helped me get jobs and maintain relationships. But they don't always get results.

So where does being a good girl actually get you in life?

I ask the question now because so many of this fall's new television shows about women are concerned with finding the answer. Just look at how many have the concept right there in their titles, and hinge upon the notion that "good" isn't necessarily the best way to be.

In NBC's The Good Place, Kristen Bell plays an afterlife interloper who must learn to be kind to avoid being deported to hell. In Amazon's Good Girls Revolt (starring Anna Camp), a team of female magazine researchers realize that their dutiful behavior isn't getting them anywhere at work, so they band together to upset the masthead patriarchy. In TNT's Good Behavior, Michelle Dockery plays a thief who's just been released from prison early on good behavior. She quickly falls into her old ways, ransacking hotels for cash and pretty lingerie—but she gives everything she earns to her son. (I think after seven seasons of post-Edwardian propriety, Dockery was ready for some guns and conwoman wigs).

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Even in series that don't nod to it in their names—FOX's Pitch, HBO's Divorce, NBC's This Is Us—women grappling with virtue and its value are front and center.

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Though these shows feature women acting out in one way or another, their fictional heroines remind me of a persistent, baseline truth: We still believe that "good" is a woman's default setting. We expect girls to both simply be good and to strive to make up whatever goodness doesn't come naturally—and, certainly, to rearrange their "resting bitch faces." (Side note: Is calling out RBF really that different from men telling women to smile on the street?)

We still believe that "good" is a woman's default setting.

Several years back, conspicuously imperfect TV heroines started showing up across the dial. Think of Carrie from Homeland, Claire from House of Cards, and Hannah from Girls. Not so long ago, I myself wrote about how enchanting these anti-heroines can be. This fall's crop of protagonists are the next, more complex wave: They aren't cut out to be bad girls, but they're willing to consider it.

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Claire Danes as Carrie from

Showtime

This is why the title Good Girls Revolt sounds grabby—good girls aren't supposed to revolt. This is why we relate deeply to Pitch's Ginny, the first woman to play professional baseball, when she laments to her father that, after years of obeying his every training command, she's all skill and no personality—just "a robot in cleats." This is why it's surprising when Sarah Jessica Parker's character on Divorce, a mom who chases her kids to the bus blowing kisses, is the one who cheats. And this is why it's not surprising when, in This Is Us, Chrissy Metz's Kate vows that she's "gonna lose the damn weight." No one needs to explain why she wants to. For women, goodness is not being fat.

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And then there's the show that bypasses subtle jabs at female righteousness in favor of a full-on conversation about it. Watching Kristen Bell's Eleanor jockey to stay in heaven in The Good Place feels subversive because she simply sees no inherent value in being good. Integrity didn't suit her when she was an earthling; she was the kind of girl who got drunk when it was her turn to be the designated driver. Now, in pseudo-heaven, she starts trying to be good with mild dread and major reluctance, the same way people start a new exercise routine. (And for the same reason: she wants to keep eating frozen yogurt, of which this show's heaven has limitless supply.) Eleanor finds goodness to be a drag. She has to give herself constant pep talks to keep at it, and it's purely about what it can get her. Watching Eleanor roll her eyes at moral code, I want to ask her if she was raised by wolves.

Sarah Jessica Parker in

Craig Blankenhorn/HBO

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But at the same time, I'm thinking maybe the wolves were onto something. Because if Eleanor thinks goodness is just a form of currency—and a suspect one at that—she might already know what I'm just discovering now, after 32 years of working hard at good-girl-ism.

Many times, I think about girls from my childhood whom parents regarded as loud or fast or wild. I somehow can't imagine they're sweating everyday confrontations like their former class president is. That's when I feel like I spent all night studying a chapter that turned out to not be on the test—which, as we all know, is pretty much the worst feeling a good girl can have.

So, now that I've learned that being good all the time doesn't guarantee some kind of payoff, how should I move through the world? I'm too old to let myself be walked on in the name of maintaining a solid reputation, but I'm also too old to become full-on bad. No one wants to see me in my Subaru bashing mailboxes. And it's not that I need to leave behind goodness altogether. It's that I need to be more like these TV heroines, regularly weighing my polite instincts against the cost of being too compliant. My guess is that many times, goodness will still be the way to go—but that other times, doing the right thing will involve making a frenemy or two.

Pamela Adlon as Sam with her daughter, Frankie, in

Nicole Wilder-Shattuck/FX

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I think I've found my muse in one more new fall TV show: Pamela Adlon's Better Things. I like that title better than all the "good" stuff out there this fall, because "better" isn't absolute. It seeks improvement, not perfection. So does Adlon's character, Sam. She has all the thematic trappings of your typical "I don't know how she does it" heroine: kids, job, romance, identity.

Her version of balance rests on an ability to say exactly what's on her mind, then keep moving. She isn't careless, but she's definitely not a people pleaser. We frequently see her picking clothes up off the floor, but she can also sit down in the middle of the day and tell her best friend's husband how rotten he is. I think she's something I'd like to be: a good girl in recovery. Not that she never falls back into her old habits; recently, Sam declined to sleep with an aged-to-perfection Lenny Kravitz because she respected him too much. But hey, everyone's entitled to a relapse. Tomorrow's another day to try to give up the halo.

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